Hi
This is my first post and apologies if it seems a bit critical.
The Sunday Times today (News, page 7) has an article by a Jonathan Leake, their Science Editor. Briefly, it says that “the 5:2 diet lacks any evidence that it can help with long term weight loss, researchers have found.”…………………..”Mosley agreed there was no evidence of long-term weight loss among people following the Fast Diet plan”…………………..”Mosley agreed that no studies had been published confirming that intermittent dieting led to long-term weight loss.”
There is much more in this vein.
As someone who has recently purchased two of Dr Mosley’s books and am considering going on the 5:2 diet *, I would welcome comments from people who are more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
I would point out that I am not assuming the Sunday Times article is correct – but perhaps it is worth considering?

* – as I am pre-type 2 diabetic, recent HBa1C score of 43

Hard to tell out of context, was Mosley agreeing there is no long term evidence because the diet hasn’t been around that long? They’ve only just started getting results from scientific studies of the Fast 800 part.

PS New Scientist often mentions studies confirming it works in mice, which they use to test things before they do human studies.

It depends what you mean by no evidence I think. I also read the fast diet forum and there are many people on the maintenance thread who are long term weight controllers, but no evidence for the many who have presumably stopped posting/logging/tracking online either way. Scientific evidence takes time to accumulate, and it is true that these specific diets are just too ‘new’ to have such evidence, but I have the evidence of my own experience of being a long term yo-yo dieter and now – not, thanks to the 5:2 and then BSD.

Looked at another way ‘rather thin’ is exactly how I feel thanks to MM 😁😁😁😁😁

I actually believe that there is only one thing you can believe in a newspaper and that is only correct for one day…the date. The 5:2 diet is less than 10 years old. Weightwatchers/Slimming World, and all the other low fat/high carb diets have been around considerably longer. They don’t work. That has been proved time and time again. Any diet is doomed to failure if you continue to eat the way you did before you lost weight. I have no intention of eating “white carbs” again as I know, from my own experience, that I will gain weight if I do.

Biltea, if you follow this way of eating and lose weight, it will be up to you to continue. There are many people here who are successful, some quicker than others. You are very welcome to join us. Give it a go, you may be pleasantly surprised.

I hope this has helped a little. Good luck. Happy New Year!

Nonna Mary
xxx

Hi Biltea

Happy New Year to you – it’s great you’re here and thinking of starting on the 5:2.

While I’ve read about the 5:2 and saw the original Horizon programme, I’ve never tried the diet. But I have been doing the BSD for the last 5+ months. I’ve lost 3 stones since August and, most importantly for me, my Hba1c has come down from an uncontrolled high – (106) on diagnosis in early August back into the normal range (35). There are lots of stories on here from current and previous posters (with pre-diabetes and diabetes) who have similar personal experiences of improved Hba1c as well as great weight loss.

I agree with the others. The 5:2 diet, like BSD, hasn’t been around long enough to accumulate a body of long-term evidence specific to it, but one of the things I like about Michael Mosley is that his books are based on some of the best evidence around of what works. I also like the fact that he is being honest about 5:2 evidence in this article (well, sounds like it).

From what I’ve read generally about ‘diets’ (and through personal experience!) there might be a problem with reduced calories leading to slower metabolism but does the fasting/non-fasting days overcome this – by the constant change up? You, and others, will know more about this than me. I know people on here (BSD) go very carefully when they start upping their calories again from 800.

When I worked in the NHS one of the things I was responsible for was looking at the evidence of what worked, so I don’t think you’re being critical in considering these things. But, I agree with Mixnmatch, evidence comes in many forms. One of the reasons I started the Blood Sugar Diet was because there were so many people on this Forum who were reporting how effective it was in reducing their blood glucose levels. (My work experience taught me that if enough people are saying something is working, you listen!).

Have faith in what people are saying and give 5:2, or BSD, or both a go. You won’t regret it.

Marie

I can imagine that any diet only works as well as anyone is honest about what they are eating, and follow it strictly. What I liked about the BSD is the information on how insulin and carbs impact on fat loss, that was the missing element for me on all previous attempts to loose weight. When you think about how being on just 800 cals a day, every day is needed to sustain just a small weight loss each week its easy to understand how weight could creep up if you are just dieting 2 days out of each week.

Weight will only creep up if you are overeating (or drinking) quite considerably on your non fast days. When I was doing the 5:2 (4:3, 2:5 etc.) I knew that as my weight dropped, so I would need less calories as my basal metabolic rate dropped as well, so for the same activity my caloric requirements dropped regularly. I kept checking my TDEE and made sure that to lose weight I was taking in quite a lot fewer calories than that. I started on 1850 calories on an NFD and 500 on a fast day, then when I discovered BSD changed to 1600 calories on an NFD and 800 on a fast day (quite a similar average calories). To lose weight faster I then added more fast days until I was doing the 8 weeks at 800 calories with very few issues. As near as I can tell my BMR is about 1550 and my typical TDEE around 1950. This allows me to eat quite a lot without putting on weight too much. It is a myth that just two fast days can balance any amount of over consumption on the remaining days, but to be fair I don’t think the diet ever claimed it could 😀

I lost weight on the “original” 5:2 diet nearly five years ago. During that time I naturally moved to eating 18/6ish, still my preferred way, and fasted for up to 48hrs at a time. The weight largely stayed off but started to creep up in 2016 when I relaxed the fasts/forgot to do them 😚. I became interested in the BSD way of eating, cut the white carbs and lost the few extra pounds I had begun to carry around my middle. Interestingly on the (not official) 5:2 forum there was a thread about low carbing long before MM brought it to wider attention. Luckily, everything crossed here, I don’t have health issues but do feel better for keeping carbs lowish – less than 50 most of the time.

I would say diets do work as long as they turn into a way of life, so you need to find one that suits yours. What doesn’t work is being ‘on a diet’ the implication being that you get to where you want to be, come off it and generally go back to square 1 – the world of the yo-yo diet. People don’t seem to understand that what made them fat in the first place will do so once again if they revert to that way of eating.

The mindset that, I think, fostered by the press and set people up to fail was “fast on 2 days and eat what you like on non-fast days”. Whilst you could eat what you wanted you couldn’t eat as much as you probably wanted – slight difference!

By “coincidence” The Times starts a diet feature today by a doctor who is anti low carb diets.

I’ve noticed a good few articles in the Times lifestyle sections saying how eliminating food groups is ‘so 2017’ – the new thing is eating everything. Also how pasta is back. they’ve definitely decided to peddle that particular thought, I wonder who/what sponsorship is behind it.

I have limited experience of the 5:2 way of eating, as I found it too hit and miss in it’s simplicity. Like many, I have no doubt I was overconsuming on the NFDs, so the fasting days had little impact and weight loss was painfully slow.

The 800 has been a revelation for me and I for one am totally convinced that carbs as the ‘baddies’, not the fats. Pasta is definitely a complete no, no for me now, because there is no way I’m going back to watching the pounds creep back up and having to replace all my lovely new smaller clothes with the big baggy garments of the past!

My best advice is to take a tour around the forum and read the real life testaments of those who have lost the weight and maintained their loss – some going into their 2nd/3rd year. What is evident, is that low carb works, but we all have to understand that this is a way of life, not a quick fix and go back to what we used to do – that way, only failure awaits.

I’ve seen a few similar articles on the ‘pasta is back’ theme, but they mainly point out that when the Italians eat pasta it is in tiny amounts, with rich accompaniments rather than the cheap bulking agent generally used in this country. In fact all of the white stuff is just eaten in far too high quantities even for those who don’t get the blood sugar spikes. In my ‘relaxed but controlled maintenance’ before Christmas and after my reboot I had many very small portions of delicious pasta, potatoes, rice and bread without putting additional weight on, not every day of course. My additional Christmas weight is pure extra sugar/fruit and alcohol! On reboot of course it is all out of my life again for the next 56 days. After that I will probably relax again.

Hi! I’ve been asked to post Michael’s riposte to the article. You can find it here and I’m also copying it below.

(Happy new year from me, too!)

RIPOSTE REGARDING RECENT NEGATIVE ARTICLES ABOUT THE 5:2 DIET AND INTERMITTENT FASTING

Dear All,

I thought I would contact you to wish you all a Happy New Year. On a slightly more depressing note I thought I would also alert you to an entirely misleading article about 5:2 and intermittent fasting in the Sunday Times, which was picked up by the Daily Mail and others. The headline was, “What a load of flimflab: proof that 5:2 diet works long-term is rather thin” and went on to quote me, totally inaccurately, as having said, “Mosley agreed there was no evidence of long-term weight loss among people following The Fast Diet plan”.

In fact what I said there are lots of animal studies and human studies that run to a year, but as yet no really long term studies. I went on to explain to the journalist why really long term studies are so difficult to do and why they are only really done by pharmaceutical companies. He ignored this.

There was also reference to a recent research paper which apparently showed intermittent fasting didn’t work, even in the short term. When you read the actual science paper (which you can at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28975722) what it concludes is that intermittent energy restriction diets do work rather well, at least in the short term (by which they mean up to 48 weeks, which is actually reasonably long for diet studies).

What they found is that intermittent fasting (IF) leads to average weight loss of at least 5 kg and multiple health benefits. “The findings support the use of weekly intermittent energy restriction as an alternative option for the treatment of obesity.”

This is almost the exact opposite of the spin the Sunday Times put on it.

The study also pointed out that people doing IF are twice as likely to lose over 15kg as those doing a more conventional diet.

Clearly more long term studies would be great, but the big question is, “who is going to pay for them?”

The Women’s Health Initiative, which included a very long term study looking for the benefits (or otherwise) of cutting fat from your diet, cost over $600m dollars and ran for over 15 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Health_Initiative

The conclusion, at the end of all that time and money, was that low fat diets don’t work.

Michael

Thanks for all the helpful replies to my original post. As Dr MM pointed out, the Sunday Times have been less than 100% accurate In reporting what he said. Hopefully a long-term study of his methods will occur in time. For now, the evidence of many people , who have found that the low-carb approach works for them is good enough for me. Thus, I will continue to pursue this dietary method also.

Thanks Michael! Isn’t it amazing when you check the original research and it says the opposite to what the reviewer claims! I’ve found that phenomenon before. Whatever sells papers.

Here’s some more evidence. I’ve posted it on another thread but this seems a good place too

SSB

https://youtu.be/Sgeh2w0j51w

Weight loss regimes (diets if you insist) are specifically designed to lose weight. Therefore it’s nonsensical for the Times to claim that any method of eating has no long term effect when, by definition, its effect is short term. It’s the long term, daily effort that is involved in maintaining weight loss that’s the problem. No one off weight loss is irreversible and no “diet”, once you stop following it, could possibly be “effective”. A bit like complaining that makeup needs renewing.

Interesting points you are raising, You snooze to gain. That’s why a whole
bevy of maintainers here, myself included, refer to the BSD as a “way of
life” and not “a diet”. We haven’t fallen back to trying to include bad carbs/
sugar in our lives in our version of moderation, and many of us have a year+
or close to it of maintenance behind us. Good luck to you and everyone
else walking this road with us. The only way to fail is to abandon the
principles of the BSD 🙂

Allie